Category: Uncategorized

I was reading Kim Strassel’s column today in the WSJ (requires subscription), and something that’s been in the back of my mind for a long time popped back up.

Why are delegates from states with open primaries considered bound?

For instance, Indiana.  Yes, I know, by state law our primaries aren’t technically “open”, but anyone can lie about their party affiliation and vote, contra the law, in an opposing party’s primary.*

If Democrats can game the Republican primary (and, to be fair, vice versa) by violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the law,** how can the Indiana primary election be considered anything but advisory to the two parties?

In Virginia, it’s just been ruled that the parties can’t bind their delegates.  If that’s true in Virginia, I can’t see how it isn’t true in Indiana.

So why don’t we repeal IC 3-10-1-2, which requires that “Each political party whose nominee received at least ten percent (10%) of the votes cast in the state for secretary of state at the last election shall hold a primary election under this chapter to select nominees to be voted for at the general election”, and the rest of IC 3-10-1 that has to do with primary elections, and just go back to the smoke-filled room?  I still maintain, as I have long done, that historically we nominated better candidates and had better government that way.  And the best part was it didn’t cost the taxpayers a dime.

________________

* IC 3-10-1-6.  See https://iga.in.gov/legislative/laws/2015/ic/titles/003/articles/010/chapters/001/ and scroll down.

** Which is unenforceable anyway, since ballots are secret and you don’t have to take a lie detector test to vote.

I mean.  Just.  Fuck my life.

The only good thing about this is that the GOP might panic and try to get Mitch Daniels to run again…

But John Gregg, the Great Nobody, may as well start picking out curtains for the Governor’s Mansion.

It’s a coward’s move, Mike.  The polls look bad against an empty suit, and you’re scarpering.  Classy.

Was reading (via Instapundit) an article about Corruptocrat-Florida Rep. Corrine Brown, who claims that, because the FBI was expending resources investigating her, they are responsible for the Orlando massacre.  As if the FBI doesn’t have other resources and can’t investigate more than one thing at a time, even if they sometimes draw the wrong conclusions for political reasons.

It made me think, once again, of this snippet from Jack McDevitt’s 2006 book Odyssey:

Back in the old days, Dryden would simply have bought Taylor. Or tried to. There would have been big political contributions. But that sort of thing had gone out two centuries earlier. The country had been taken over briefly by a corporate autocracy and hopelessly corrupt politicians. Money bought access. But the Second American Revolution had happened, people started taking the Constitution seriously again, and the practice of renting and buying congressmen had been stopped by the simple expedient of getting money out of the campaigns. Contributions of all types became illegal. Campaigns were funded by the voters. You gave money to a politician, it constituted bribery, and you could go to jail.

The world had changed. Politicians had come dangerously close to developing integrity. But as MacAllister would have said, they were no more competent than ever.

— Jack McDevitt, Odyssey, pp. 81-82

Ah, if only.  By the way, I have no doubt that McDevitt was thinking of the Republicans when he talked about a “corporate autocracy” and “hopelessly corrupt politicians” leading to a Second American Revolution and renewed respect for the Constitution, and one assumes without data that he voted for Obama twice.  Interesting that things seem to be turning out the other way.

(If McDevitt is, contrary to my speculations, a man of the right, I apologize.  But the terms “corporate autocracy” and “hopelessly corrupt politicians” being thrown around in the mid-aughts echoes pretty identically what the Democrats were saying about the Bush Administration and the Republican congress.)

Trump’s vigorous defense of anti-Semitic image a “turning point” for many Jews

Fuck me raw.

As a Jew born and raised, I say that politically, Jews are some of the most ridiculous people on the face of the earth.  They can always be trusted to act and vote against their own best political interests.

Naturally, there are exceptions to the general rule (Jonah Goldberg comes to mind).  Just not enough of them.

And fortunately, there are people out there vigorously denying the narrative.

PS:  Any motherfucker who calls me a self-hating Jew over this can kiss my fat white heinie.  The only self-hating Jews in this world are the ones who can’t see past the blinders they’ve put on their own damn heads.  I for one refuse to be a sheep led to the slaughter, bleating, “but I always supported the regime!”, when the knock comes at midnight.

Oh, and?  #NeverTrump.  But also #NeverDemocrats.

…let’s have some music.

Who will rid us of this horrific bitch?

Golda Meir was wrong.  There will be peace with the Arabs only when the Israelis finally get fed up with Hamas and wipe Gaza off the map, then pivot north and do the same with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and then dare the mullahs in Iran to do something about it.

Leaving them alone and hoping they will change doesn’t work.  They have been continually radicalized by their “leaders” and can’t be negotiated with.  They understand only death.  (I nearly said “the code of the warrior”, but these serpents are not warriors — they are cowardly murderers who slither through the night on their bellies, sneak into peaceful homes, and kill innocent children in the name of their false prophet, pigs be upon him.)

Islam will be a religion of peace only when its radicals are dead, its Koran is redacted, and its people are reeducated and civilized.

But only figuratively.  Florida has no hills.  Well, except the man-made ones.  Those are usually sanitary landfills.

We got up at 0myGod thirty on June 16, and drove to the airport, parking in Economy and riding the shuttle to the terminal.  Except that it doesn’t stop at the terminal.  It stops at Ground Transportation, which is clear over at the garage, so we had to schlep our luggage (3 bags, two backpacks, and my CPAP) over to the terminal to check the three bags.  This I vow:  Never again.  I’ll drop the lady off at the terminal with the bags FIRST, or we’ll just take a cab.  The cost of a cab both ways is roughly comparable to 10 days in the economy lot, so it’s basically a wash either way.

By the way, I’m still pissed off at IND for dropping their old policy of allowing handicapped parkers to park in the garage for the economy rate.

We blew through TSA fast.  We signed up for Pre-check some weeks back.  Frankly I don’t care if my fingerprints and info are in yet another government database; I’m sure they already have a copy of the ones I gave the county (and thus the State Police) for my carry permit.  But this makes dealing with TSA much simpler.  Except when it doesn’t.  See below.

So, our 7:00AM flight was all set to go.  Everybody got on the plane without issue.  However, the plane had issues.  First we were told “just clearing up some paperwork.”  Then we were told, “Maintenance is working on an issue and should be done in 15 minutes.”  Then we were told, “We need to fly parts in from Midway.”  Then we were told, “We’re flying in a whole new plane, too.  Let’s all get off and go back to the terminal and wait for it.”

Which we did, politely.  It is what it is.  They asked us to please remember where we were sitting so we could sit in the same seats on the new plane.  I’m not sure what that was in aid of, since they were going to call us in the same order, but the ways of Southwest Airlines are inscrutable.

Next, they told us that they would be calling us up alphabetically to the desk.  We assumed they were going to reissue boarding passes.  Nope!  Because the flight was going to be so late, they handed everyone who’d boarded on time a $200 flight voucher good for a year.  That was really nice of them; it paid (in theory) for our rental car.  In reality, the lady will use them to go visit her parents later this year.  I rarely fly, and when I do, usually someone else is paying for it.

So we sat.  And we sat.  And we sat some more.  They kept coming on the intercom occasionally to let us know that the plane was still at MDW, but it would be taking off shortly.  It did finally take off at about 10AM.  We were able to board at around 11:30, and the plane raised ground at 12:03 PM (according to the timestamp on my Facebook post).  A little over two hours later, we were in Fort Myers, and we got to Naples at around 3, stopping at a local friend’s house to pick up the radio equipment I’d FedEx’ed to them a few days before.

We then proceeded to spend about five days in Naples.  We ate well.  I made 51 JT9 contacts on 20 meters from the condo living room over the next few days without really trying very hard.  The lady spent a good deal of time at the beach.  Then we packed it all up and moved it to the Marriott Sanibel Harbour Resort and Spa for the lady’s professional symposium.

I didn’t do any radio there because, first, I was afraid I might set off some poorly-wired alarm system with RF, and second, I had to work two days while we were there because I didn’t have enough vacation time to just laze about.  So the only day I really had off was Friday.  I used part of that day packing the radio equipment back up and getting it to the front desk to be FedEx’ed back home.  Of course I missed their pickup, so as far as I know, the package is still sitting at the hotel till they get there today.

We lazed around on Saturday till 2PM, checked out, took the car back to the airport and turned it in, and checked our bags.  We then went through the most maddening event of the entire trip:  RSW TSA.  Apparently “Pre-check” to them means, “Take the blue card and hand it to the magnetometer operator so you don’t have to take your shoes off,” and not much else; we were forced to remove computers from our backpacks AND they made me take my CPAP out of its bag.  Which is a royal pain in the ass, because the machine itself is at the bottom of the bag with the hose and mask and power unit all piled in on top and around it (it’s just the way it’s designed).  I wouldn’t have been nearly as pissed off about this, though, if it hadn’t been for the tall, mustachioed, moronic Heartbreak Ridge/Full Metal Jacket DI-channeling TSA agent who was shouting at everyone to remove this, remove that, if you’re Pre you only get to keep your shoes on, what part of “everything including CPAPs” did you not understand.

You know — fuck that guy.  TSA is going to hear about this, because not only did he piss me off (which doesn’t take much), he also pissed of my normally-unflappable wife, who swore she would be calling TSA on Monday and asking WTF goes on, since we paid for Pre-check which is supposed to ease that entire process.  Apparently it only eases it when the local assholes decide that they’ll allow it.  Sorry dudes, but I can’t help it that when RSW built their new fancy mid-field terminal, they didn’t build big enough security areas to handle the traffic so you could have a separate Pre-check line.

As for me, the guy is lucky I really wanted to get on that plane and go home, because I damn near decked him.

So we finally got on the plane, which was completely full, so I ended up jammed over against the fuselage in the window seat (which, BTW, is the best seat for a fat boy; there is actually extra room next to the window because of the curve in the fuselage).

Then:

“Ah, we’re just clearing up some paperwork and we’ll roll back as soon as we get that taken care of.”

“Um, maintenance is working on a small issue, but we should be off the ground shortly.”

The lady and I looked at each other and nearly died laughing.  “Do you think we’ll get another $400 in vouchers?” she asked.  Of course we had to explain this to our seatmate, too.

So then they come on with, “Well, we’ve fixed the problem…anyway, it’s fixed well enough to get to Indianapolis.”  How…encouraging.  But then we pulled back and took off and actually made it to Indy on time.  We retrieved luggage and I left the lady at the terminal and went and got the car, much simpler that way…and then we stopped at Culvers for dinner on the way home and were back in the house by 8PM.

It was a nice trip, except for the TSA jerk at the end.  But he, too, shall pass.  And he may not have a job much longer if my wife has anything to say about it.

This includes my boss, who, predictably, wrote one of his long screeds about nothing to the staff on Friday bemoaning Brexit.  The subject line alone was sufficient for me to simply ignore it.

I have to get away from this toxic piece of Eurotrash.